Smiting the smiteable since 2005

Shock and Awe: Class Warfare Isn’t About the Money

The new conservative battle cry is that the upper classes are under attack by a mob of have somes and have nots carrying pitchforks and looking for the closest Gulfstream or mega-million bonus to pillage. But, if there’s a class war going on the poor have clearly lost. The only “war” left is for the victors to scorch the earth from the backs of the Four Horses of the Apocalypse so those damn welfare recipients don’t rise up and steal a government-subsidized, agribusiness produced loaf of bread from the banquet inside the palace.

It’s tempting to think the apacalyptoes are all about simple greed and avarice – just poor little schmoes who feel the need to waggle their tiny dicks in the face of mankind.

Swirly Victims Today, Bullies Tomorrow
You may not like it, but you can understand it. They’re just poor little kids who got their asses regularly kicked and were the recipients of one too many swirlies. It’s sad. It’s a story to tug at the heartstrings. Aside from the ass-kickers and swirly givers, who wouldn’t feel sorry for them?

But as it turns out, they’re bigger dicks (not meant in the anatomical sense) than the school yard bullies ever were. Sure, there’s plenty of good old-fashioned greed and avarice, but theirs comes with a twist – it’s psychopathic.

Don’t take my word for it, look at a study produced by German University of St. Gallen. In comparing the behavior of big time rogue stock traders to the behavior of criminal psychopaths at Switzerland’s Pöschwies prison researchers found the class warriors, “more reckless and manipulative than the psychopaths.”

A Bat Up Side the Head
The study found money was only secondary though. In reality, the class warriors weren’t all about big money, they were more interested in destroying the competition. Or as researcher Thomas Noll put it, “it was most important to the traders to get more than their opponents. And they spent a lot of energy trying to damage their opponents.” It was,”as though their neighbor had the same car and they took after it with a baseball bat so they could look better themselves.”

Aside from the behavior being quantified by scientific methods, the results shouldn’t come as a surprise. At the least, these miscreants are tone-deaf to the issues of a common citizen. At worst, they steal grandma’s nest egg out from under her skirts while crashing the international financial system … in plain sight so that everyone could see them do it … and then use a baseball bat to beat up the car grandma was living in for good measure.

Even giving the rich the benefit of the doubt and there is class warfare going on, it doesn’t seem like a very fair fight. The pitchfork and rock carrying classes are up against an enemy where the richest companies and most shameless politicians in the world are commanded by a handful of people with the wealth and power of a medium-sized European country.